Does Size matter? - How many questions is too many in your online survey?

Surveys are all about collecting information. To get the right information you need to ask the right questions. While 'the right questions' is covered elsewhere, here I am going to discuss the number of questions as an aspect of design.

As with most things the answer is "it depends". However with online surveys a good rule is the fewer the better. How many times have we seen a great focussed survey get a poor response because every person in the approval chain has decided to add another question? The logic being that seeing we are asking people questions I would like to add just one more. This inevitably will be somewhat off topic and with each additional item the integrity of the survey dies a little death.

Rule 1 - Focus the survey! As soon as you wander, even slightly, the respondents will start to question why they are responding at all. I must say the most successful surveys are the 'front of mind' type topics with up to ten questions. The questions follow a logical progression to help the user think about the answers in a logical way. For example you may ask about? 1. what they thought the process was like before 2. did they feel involved in the problem identification process 3. did they feel all problems were identified 4. did the upgrade plan make sense to them 5. was there sufficient communications during the upgrade 6. did the new system live up to what they expected 7. What could have been done better Can you see how the questions followed a rational order, in this case time/process based?

Rule 2 - 10 minutes is an inconvenience, 15 minutes is an investment. When you ask users to respond to a survey you are asking them to spend some of their hard earned time for you. - What are they getting in return? For many surveys it is little if anything. Most people will spend up to 10 minutes out of charity. Anything over this and they will be expecting something in return. It may be as basic at a raffle ticket or as complex as a detailed analysis of their response against a broader population of respondents. Either way it needs to have value to them and be clear at the outset.

This brings me to my next point: No matter how long your survey is, there must be an introduction that states what is expected of the respondent and what they are going to get in return. This is usually put as how long the survey is expected to take (don't lie!) and what if anything they can expect in return. Eg. "?will take approximately 10 minutes and will help lead us to devise a system that works to your best interests."

Rule 3 - Trapped users don't care. We have all done these sorts of surveys, where you start and it seems to go on and on. You get lost as the questions seem to repeat and you are getting no closer to the end. In frustration you then start selecting the mid range response without really reading the question. Not I! I hear you saying. Can I tell you that statistics imply that this starts to happen to some extent after the first ten questions! With only limited investment users can quickly turn to prisoners looking for a way out ignoring you hard thought questions.

I want to make a last note here. A short survey is five questions of a multiple choice type, say radio button or checkbox. A long survey is only 20 questions. Think about why your respondents are investing the time. If you have come to the lower limit of your questions and you are still well over twenty, you might consider putting the more critical ones towards the front.

If you have any topics you would like covered please mail me at SteveWrightMail@gmail.com and I will include them in my growing list.

cheers Steve

Hi, after years of designing survyes I am collecting together some of the key lessons. http://surveysurvival.2leadership.com

Why to Pay a Survey Site -When its Free

The gigantic development of the Internet during the last few decades has spawned numerous business activities on the net. The "Paid Survey Sites" is one of the best rollouts of biz-boom on the Internet. Paid Surveys have attracted considerable interest in recent times as an option to earn money working from home. Today many aspirants are seeking job or work that can be done from home. Knowing that it is a fast and smooth way to earn money, drives these hundreds aspirants towards paid online surveys.

Many so called paid survey companies have been started to take advantage of this interest. These companies charge their users $30 to $60 to get access to a database of market research companies. They also promote themselves with advertisements promising massive earnings to their users. On the other hand, free paid online surveys sites let you join the market research companies without paying a single cent. Let us examine what is the reality about paid surveys?

Market research is a multi-billion dollar industry. Companies want feedback from general public regarding their products or services and how to improve them. Before launching new products or services, they need to find out consumer preferences. For this, they conduct surveys and utilize the results to improve their products. Market research companies conduct surveys and other forms of consumer research on behalf of paid survey companies. Previously, surveys used to be conducted in person and over telephone. With the emergence of the Internet they have recognized the potential for its use for online market research in the form of online surveys.

These online paid survey sites are online part of market research companies. They pay you for your opinions, with many of them giving you cash reward. Some of them would enter you into prize draws or sweepstakes. These paid survey companies that charge you, and gives you access to a database of survey sites. You have to join each site manually. They may show off, having hundreds of survey sites in their database.

However, only few of them are really worth joining. The rest are not worth even the effort of signing up. Additionally, they don't feature some of the best survey sites as they have restricted them to not participate in paid survey databases.

Many people who have paid these companies for joining have later found it thorny to even recover their investment. These sites demand a definite level of commitment on your side to answer surveys.

If you want make money from genuine online paid surveys, but have no budget to join a website that offers paid surveys, you can start up by joining a free paid surveys website. These survey sites are all free to join.

Did you know that it is not required to pay, if we find enough surveys to reach our cash goal? You have to only find them. There are many sites that offer free joining and let you to answer the surveys, which also offer handsome earnings and rewards. As there is no monetary risk in becoming member of these free paid survey websites, it is worth to join them. This free paid site generates an opportunity to earn around $400 to $500 per month.

Many dedicated survey takers earn $500 to $600 or may be more per month. Some of these would send survey invitations on daily, some would weekly and some may even send invitation monthly. There are many sites that review major market research company to acknowledge you about each before joining.

The key to increase your earnings is to join as much as survey sites, you can. There are many excellent free paid online survey sites are available out there, such as Globaltestmarket, Opinion outpost, Pinecone Research, NFO mysurvey, and many more.

However, there are also issues with spam emails from the free sites that require you to join a program or newsletter. Lots of people who joined these survey companies have found their inbox has been filled with tons of unwanted or spam emails. It is always best to select the site that offers you the information with any condition to join survey sites at your own rate of knots.

Analyzing all these factors, it's in your profit to join free paid surveys rather than to join the so-called paid survey companies risking your hard earned money.

Alex Ruban is the owner of Paid Surveys since March, 2003. His site provides information about hundreds of free legitimate paid online surveys, polls, and focus group providers along with detailed reviews, descriptions of each program, paid survey guidelines and useful tips.

Ten Reasons Why Online Surveys are the Future Of Marketing

 

Customers are tough cookies. They're extremely media aware and increasingly cynical it's a clever marketeer who can get under their skin. Online surveys reinvent the traditional format and offer a unique way of interaction all the benefits of the internet without the programming.

Here are ten reasons why they may be the silver bullet marketeers' need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of Survey Galaxy - one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper.

1. It's cheap as buttons

Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish is minimal. Useful information harvested from surveys can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It's easy peasy

Anyone can develop an online survey. Survey sites allow people who are interested in the benefits of surveys, rather than technicalities, to side-step the required programming skills and create relevant up-to-the-minute surveys, instantly surveys that are even easier to complete than they are to make.

3. Anyone can play

Once the survey is online it's a simple step to promote it, either through email (with a link enclosed), via a link from a website or referenced by other forms of advertising. Anyone who has the link can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that's convenient to them, 24x7.

4. We've all got an opinion and we like to give it

Customers like surveys they're not seen as spam, but as an empowering opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand. They can be particularly good for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive way and encourages employee participation. Online surveys allow the message to reach each individual and invite feedback in a manageable form.

5. Get inside their heads

You can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can't make them think. Surveys actively engage the respondents, who think about the question before giving their response.

6. Beautiful relationships start here

It needn't all end at the end of the survey while you have their attention and are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter making the most of the window when you have their interest.

7. If you like this, you'll love

Perhaps one of the strongest elements in a survey is the ability to make inspired or useful connections instantly to other areas. By including links within the survey to websites that offer detailed information you are able to reinforce the marketing message.

8. Subtly does it

Surveys can be used to associate a product with positive attributes. By listing the many features of a product and asking the respondent how important they are, regardless of their response, the product will be associated with the features; if they are rated as important the positive impact is endorsed by the customer.

9. It's not just about selling

A survey is an effective, quick and easy method to promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; maybe a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme. Take the example of a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. A survey can explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better position to appreciate what the real advantages are that might just combat any negative headlines. As well as promoting the cause, useful feedback is gained that can be used to fine tune the overall marketing strategy.

10. Fresh topics engage interest

Thinking laterally a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide the 'hook' to engage respondents. The survey subject can be focused towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. The survey's marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that 'this survey was sponsored by brand name', or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product something that is surprisingly easy and highly effective. Discover the benefits of including in your website a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing surveys. Having a public survey notice board as part of a website is a low cost and automated method that helps to increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. Unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results are displayed in summary form enabling them to dispense with moderators free and maintenance.

Many of the techniques and a few more to boot are contained in the following sample survey:-

http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublishes.asp?survey_id=956

For an example of a Public Survey area please click on the following link:-

http://www.surveygalaxy.com/surPublic.asp

Martin Day is owner of Survey Galaxy Ltd. For more information visit http://www.surveygalaxy.com

martin.day@gmail.com

Understanding Survey Software Features

If you take a look at the features that different survey softwares offer, you will quickly realize that understanding all of them is no mean task. But it is very important that you do because only then you can choose the right survey software. It is important for one other reason, it determines your price. More features invariably means more dollars. So if you don't choose the right survey software, you might end up paying more for features you don't need.

While it is impossible and not even worthwhile to look at all the features, here is a look at some of the important ones. Chances are that these are the ones will make or break your decision. The features have been divided into 6 categories based on their function in the process of conducting an online survey.

Survey creation

• Images, sounds, video - This allows you to insert images, sounds, and videos in your surveys, and can enhance the appearance of your surveys. However, use it only when necessary since it increases the time it takes to download and display your survey, and certainly don't overdo it.

• Question library, response library, sample surveys - These allow you to create surveys quickly since you don't have to create them from scratch. They are a must if you do a lot of surveys regularly. And they don't impact the price that much, so you might as well opt for them.

• Skip logic - This allows you to skip questions depending on the answers to previous questions. Most survey softwares allow either AND or OR logic to decide whether to skip or not, but some allow a combination of any logical conditions. It might sound like a "nice-to-have" feature rather than a "must-have", but you will be surprised how often you need to skip questions in your surveys.

• Data piping - This allows you to use the answers to some questions in the following questions. This is a very neat feature and it allows you to "personalize" your surveys. For e.g., you can say "Thanks Steve" instead of only "Thanks" if you know that the name of the respondent is Steve from a previous question. It also allows you to ask questions like "What do you like most about Coke?" when the respondent has selected Coke as his/her favorite drink in the previous question.

• Advanced survey creation features (spell check, auto-correct, thesaurus, import from MS Word) - These are fairly advanced features and not really required in most cases, especially if you don't do surveys regularly. You can spend the time to spell check the survey yourselves. However, if you do a lot of surveys, then you might want these features. But they will impact the price quite a lot since they are considered as "premium" features.

• Branding (your logo and background color) - This allows you to place your company logo and use your company website's background color for your surveys. This is good enough in most cases, but not if you are looking to customize each and every aspect of the survey. It is quite an important feature since it gives your respondents the feeling that they are still on your website.

• Advanced survey presentation features (pre-designed editable survey templates, new templates, full-customized look) - These are fairly advanced features and allow you to customize almost every aspect of the survey. Survey softwares do this in a variety of ways: they have pre-designed editable templates, ability to create new templates, or create surveys with a full-custom look. These features are also considered as "premium" features and will impact the price quite a lot.

Survey Distribution and Tracking

• Handheld device - This allows you to distribute your surveys on hendheld devices. This method of distributing is not as common as the other methods like placing link on website, embedding entire survey in websites, sending email invitation with link, or embedding entire survey in emails and newsletters. But it is definitely becoming popular because of the convenience it offers for taking surveys "on the road". As of now though, it is considered as a "premium" feature and will impact the price.

• Track respondents - These allow you to track your respondents after they receive your email invitations. The simpler ones allow you to maintain an email list and send email invitations to all or some email addresses in the list. The more complex ones allow you to create an "audience" from the list in a variety of ways. They also allow you to track who read your email invitation and clicked on what links, who took the survey and who didn't, send reminders to the ones who didn't, etc. All these complex tracking activities fall more under the realm of "campaign management" than conducting surveys though. If you need these features, you are much better off going for a full-blown campaign management solution than a survey solution with half of what you need.

Taking Survey

• Password protected surveys - This allows you to protect your surveys with a password. The respondents have to know the password to be able to take the survey.

• Save and continue later - This allows your respondents to save the survey and continue later. It is a very good feature to have especially if your surveys are going to be long. Some survey softwares make the respondents explicitly save a link and bookmark it to continue later. These don't work that well compared to some others that don't require the respondents to do as much.

• Response validation - This allows you to validate the responses your respondents enter. These features are very important since they ensure that your respondents enter "valid" responses and increases the quality of the results. Always prefer survey softwares that have more types of response validation.

• Respondent uniqueness control - This allows you to ensure that a respondent takes the survey only once. There are a few ways to do this and not all of them are "full-proof". If you want to strictly enforce respondent uniqueness, make sure that the survey software allows you to send unique URLs to every email recipient. It is the only "full-proof" method of enforcing respondent uniqueness.

Response Collection

• Email notification upon response submission - This allows you to get email notifications when a respondent completes a survey. It is the only way to get the responses with survey softwares that don't store them in a database. But it is also offered as an addon by those that do store them in databases.

Survey Analysis

• Graphical reports - This allows you to graph the results and not all survey softwares have this feature. If you like to see results in neat-looking graphs, make sure that the survey software has this feature. Check out the sample reports; most companies have them on their website. Or better yet, try out the product and generate them yourselves!

• Advanced analysis features (cross-tabulation, sub-set analysis, 360 degree feedback, etc) - These allow you to perform advanced analysis on the results. Cross-tabulation allows you to relate the responses of one question to those of another. Sub-set analysis allows you to perform analysis on a sub-set of the responses by filtering out certain responses. These are definitely "premium" features and will impact the price.

• Export data - This allows you to export the responses so you can do analyses in your favorite tool, like Excel or SPSS. Make sure that the survey software has this feature, especially if it doesn't natively support the advanced analyses that you want to do.

Report Distribution

• Save in PDF, Word, Excel, Powerpoint format - This allows you to save the report in one of the mentioned formats. It is a very convenient feature to have if you are going to distribute your report a lot.

© Web Based Survey Software (http://www.web-based-survey-software.org) 2004

This article has been copyrighted and has been reprinted with the permission of Web Based Survey Software (http://www.web-based-survey-software.org). If you want to reprint this article, please send an email to webmaster@web-based-survey-software.org to inform us and we will grant you the permission. But please ensure that this message appears at the end of the article and proper credits are given.

nick@web-based-survey-software.org

3 Serious Concerns About Hygiene in Public Restrooms Revealed in Survey

In a study by Kimberly-Clark Professional, 39% of survey
respondents feared picking up germs in a public restroom more
than any other place. Is there good reason for the fear or are
people overly concerned? Can you reduce the risks?

WHAT'S IN THERE - CAN IT HURT YOU?

Without getting too specific, there are many germs that can
thrive in restrooms. Bacteria live off of moisture and organic
food (or waste)- which can be plentiful in public restrooms.

Fears of contacting STD's (sexually transmitted diseases) from a
public washroom have more to do with the fear of the disease than
the likelihood of picking it up in a washroom. Many of these
bacteria and viruses do not live long enough outside the body to
be easily transmitted. However, some experts admit there is a
theoretical risk of herpes or crabs being contracted under
certain - but unlikely - conditions. Some public facilities
provide flushable toilet seat covers, antibacterial cleansers or
you can line the seat with toilet paper.

Of greater concern are salmonella and shigella bacteria which can
be transferred by contact with feces. The infected person can
transmit the bacteria on their hands which can then be
transferred to flushing handles, door handles and faucets.

RESTROOM HYGIENE - BATTLING BACTERIA

Foul odors, lack of supplies and puddles on the floors can all be
signs of improper maintenance.

Odor that comes from public washrooms can be caused by urine in
tile grouting. If the floors aren't properly cleaned daily (or
more) then the uric acid salts will not be removed with regular
cleansers. These salts provide a food source for bacteria whose
digestive processes give off the foul odor.

Products like MicroGuard (tm) from AllDura and even stainless
steel can reduce the maintenance required to keep bacteria growth
to a minimum.

A lack of supplies (toilet paper, hand drying towels or soap) can
also increase the unhygienic conditions of a restroom. Overly
crowded restrooms can suffer from a lack of supplies or a lack of
available sinks, soap dispensers or dryers.

PERSONAL HYGIENE - THE MAGIC WEAPON

It is the simple truth that hand washing will drastically cut the
chance for germ transference. A study done by Scott Papers found
that more than nine out of ten respondents claimed to wash their
hands when using public restrooms. However, only 67% were
actually observed doing so.

As manufacturers of paper products, including towels, the company
also states that drying hands thoroughly is imperative in
practicing proper hygiene. The moisture left on hands can still
carry bacteria. Because of this, air drying machines may not be
enough protection since many individuals do not use them long
enough to thoroughly dry their hands.

The knowledge that proper washing and drying can protect you from
even unsavory public restrooms is comforting. The fact that
public washrooms still need to provide the basics for good
hygiene, as well as good maintenance is something that needs
work. Carrying an antibacterial gel for emergency use is
recommended when visiting a public area.

The information contained in this article is for educational purposes
only and is not intended to medically diagnose, treat or cure any
disease. Consult a health care practitioner before beginning any
health care program.

Emily Clark is editor at Lifestyle Health News and Medical Health News where you can find the most up-to-date advice and information on topical health matters.